


Memories and Mammoths

by LydeNicoKITE



Series: no feeling is final (short stories) -2020 [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Andy | Andromache of Scythia Needs a Hug, Angst, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Team as Family, a stuffed mammoth made me cry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:20:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27262615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LydeNicoKITE/pseuds/LydeNicoKITE
Summary: for the prompt:"Ok but do you ever think about how Andy is so old that Woolly Mammoths were still around when she was young?? I imagine that they were her favorite animals to watch, and when they went extinct, she was pretty down about it- so for her birthday or as a present, Joe and Nicky give her a hand-made stuffed mammoth and a sketch based off of her own descriptions so that she can see them again ;-;"I went overboard and added even more feelings.----------------------Sometimes Andy forgets how long she’s been alive. Her mind is a sea. Sometimes it’s calm, most days it is stirred by an invisible breeze, memories that play in the back of her mind with a terrifying underlying doubt:am I remembering this correctly? Did this happen? What else have I lost?I look at a window of stained glass and the green is the exact shade of a lake. I can’t remember anything else. Who was with me? I remember someone holding my hand. I remember I loved you. I forgot you. I am sorry.
Relationships: Andromache of Scythia & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova & Nile Freeman, Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko
Series: no feeling is final (short stories) -2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1839736
Comments: 21
Kudos: 96





	Memories and Mammoths

###  _Memories and Mammoths_

Sometimes Andy forgets how long she’s been alive. Her mind is a sea. Sometimes it’s calm, most days it is stirred by an invisible breeze, memories that play in the back of her mind with a terrifying underlying doubt: _am I remembering this correctly? Did this happen? What else have I lost?_

_I look at a window of stained glass and the green is the exact shade of a lake. I can’t remember anything else. Who was with me? I remember someone holding my hand. I remember I loved you. I forgot you. I am sorry._

In the past centuries there’s been anger, a storm that draws its power from the bottom of the ocean itself, from the place where she buries her pain —every grave, every year of loneliness, every moment of happiness that time has snatched away when she wasn’t looking. Anger brings everything to the surface in a deep wound of feelings. She doesn’t mind feelings, she fights against numbness every day.

Memory: Quỳnh said she could remember for both of them. _Whatever you forget, I’ll remember. I’ll tell you everything at night, stories to keep us awake when it is not time to surrender to the night just yet. I don’t like falling asleep when I can have you right here._

Memory: Quỳnh’s kisses that night. Her arms holding Andy close. The rare luxury of feeling held and safe and for once, _not alone_.

Andy doesn’t want to sleep. It’s not like she can really see Quỳnh there.

Memory: Booker gasping awake by her side. He looked younger, which is both impossible and true. His blue eyes were still a clear spring sky. The night was cold and it was ... three centuries ago? No, this is wrong. It’s impossible to keep track of exact years. Andy lives in eras.

Booker gasped and everyone had their hand on their weapons. And that time it was Yusuf the one who, despite the visible tiredness in his eyes, was the first to ask what was wrong. “Is everything fine?”

Nicolò was pretending not to listen. So was Andy. But French was easy back then, it was the language of every day. Booker’s French was clear as the green lake where Andy ~~thinks~~ ~~remembers~~ imagines happened her first kiss.

“I dreamt of a woman in an iron coffin.”

The memory focuses on what happened right after those words. Something ugly and ferocious started snarling, barely awake, in her chest. It snapped its teeth and even if it wasn’t green, it was dark grey and the deep black of the bottom of the ocean, Andy knew what it was.

“You dreamt of Quỳnh.” Yusuf said. Nicolò closed its eyes as if a new burden was falling on his shoulder all over again.

_Oh_ , Andy remembers thinking, _envy_.

Andy remembers when she’s not fighting. That’s why she kept herself active, even if she had to be alone at times because the others couldn’t handle her pace of moving/dying/fighting/moving.

She’s been mortal for six months and she can feel that her mind changed. Her brain doesn’t heal anymore. She forgets and it’s almost painless. She loses the important bits and the useless days, which are never useless because piled together create friendships, love, meaning, _family_. She can’t fight it and she is trying to accept that.

Andy as a mortal can grasp the concept of family better than her immortal self ever could. The others ( _NickyJoeNileBookerNileJoeNicky_ , her litany of anchors to the present) are going to outlive her, and it will probably hurt them, but this is exactly why she can love them better now. She can teach Nile how to fight in a way that anyone else but her forgot, she can drink cheap wine with Nicolò and wash the dishes with Joe. She can laugh and pretend to be mad when Nicky says something sappy and absolute and incorrect like “I believe our love in a way will be forever”.

She can be with them with her whole self, because she knows that, if she plays her cards right, she will be the first to die for real. Is she selfish to find this comforting? Maybe. But it’s a relief, knowing she won’t have to mourn Nile. She can hug Nile. She can let Joe leave a kiss on her cheek. She can phone Booker in the middle of the night to hear his voice. She can have her family for as long as she can resist, then she’ll die at her own terms.

Memory: a voice. _You’re not allowed to die without me._

Missing Quỳnh is now easier than remembering her at all.

-

Booker stops answering her calls six months after Merrick. Maybe she’s getting paranoid, but she thinks something’s happening. It can be something good: maybe Booker is getting therapy. Maybe he went back to teaching. Maybe he doesn’t answer her calls but still texts Nile late at night. It happened just once, but it could happen again.

Memory, fresh like ink just spilled: it was their second mission since Merrick, three months ago. Joe was driving, Nicky was asleep in the seat behind Andy’s. They were all tired, but Nicky was exhausted: he’d stayed awake to keep track of their mark for almost forty hours, separated by the rest of the group and with no means of communication. Joe had panicked, of course, but this time Booker wasn’t there to distract him. It’s difficult to remember they have to do without him. It’s not Nile’s place to replace Booker. As he drove, Joe checked every few minutes if Nicky was okay, his mind evenly divided between Nicky and the road in front of them.

Andy was trying not to fall asleep. The silence was comfortable, heavy like a cocoon of blankets, or heavy like the moment before you start dreaming. The sea in Andy’s head was calm.

Behind Joe, Nile was texting someone. In their microcosm, it didn’t take a genius to know who she was texting. Not Copley, who was driving in the van behind them. Sebastien then, and the light of the screen showed that Nile was smiling faintly. Andy didn’t ask. She wondered, though.

She wants to see Booker again before she dies.

Something else is happening around Andy. Nicky can’t hide surprises, he smiles too much when he’s lost in thought. Andy sees him smiling at a pile of dirty dishes, eyes vacant, and knows: they’re planning something (if it’s Nicky, it’s also Joe).

Andy knows, but she thinks it’s for Nile. If she knew Nile better, she would see how she disappears with Joe in the early mornings when both Joe and Andy are usually still asleep. If Andy wasn’t so old that she forgets she doesn’t know everything, she would definitely notice how Nile asks her many questions about the past. She asks about mammoths, of all things. Of course Andy has seen them. She even liked them. They were huge and beautiful and they seemed immortal, until they weren’t.

Nile uncovers memories without making it hurt too much. She asks but knows when to stop, lets Andy reorganise her thoughts before she starts to speak. Nile is sweet and strong in all things; Andy loves her so much already. That’s why Andy doesn’t notice the subtle pattern in the questions, she just answers.

Nicky smiles, Nile asks, Joe draws every night while Nicky and Nile play mario kart. Andy basks in a month of quiet love and doesn’t notice how it’s all for her.

It’s been six months and more since Merrick when they give her the notebook. And the stuffed mammoth.

It goes like this: she wakes up and goes to the kitchen still in her pajama, which is actually a tank top with too many bullet holes and an old pair of sweatpants so large they were probably bought for Sebastien. Her eyes are half shut, her mind blissfully warm and empty from sleep. She doesn’t see the mammoth on the table at first, she goes straight to the coffee machine.

Then, in the corner of the kitchen you don’t see from the door, Nicky huffs; it’s actually a muffled word interrupted in its beginning by an elbow in the stomach. It’s a sound that happens often in their shared life, Andy recognises it immediately.

Andy turns and sees Nile, Joe and Nicky, all three with very unusual expressions: Nicky is smiling broadly, Joe looks worried, Nile’s face is impassively blank. They’re still in night clothes, only Nicky is wearing an apron over his worn gray t-shirt. The air smells of _blini_. She follows Nicky’s eyes and only then she sees the mammoth.

It’s not small, it’s the size of a small koala. The eyes are black shiny buttons, taken from an old coat, the fabric is not always the same, it’s a patchwork. Andy recognises the brown fabric of one of Nicky’s favourite hoodies, the silk of an old beautiful scarf Yusuf bought in Paris. She takes it in her hands and is surprised by how soft but solid it is. It’s handmade, Nicky’s work unmistakable in the perfect sequence of identical stitches, but with Joe’s eye for colour. The thread is not only brown but also orange, gray, purple. Andy looks at it and despite her reputation of hardened warrior she finds it adorable. _Mine_ , the girl who grew up thousands of years ago screams, _it’s so cute._

She is speechless. She doesn’t let go of the mammoth but opens the notebook on the table in a silence of happy anticipation. They worked on this for a month, she realises. The cover of the notebook is black, familiar: Yusuf has had many notebooks like this one. But the first drawing she sees takes her by surprise. It’s not Yusuf’s style, it’s black strong lines and warm colours, the complete picture is surprisingly soft. _Nile did this_.

It’s a drawing of Andy, Nicky and Joe on the sofa, Andy has her head on Joe’s lap and pokes Nicky’s laughing face with her foot. It’s a memory _._ Three weeks ago.

She starts flipping the pages and she has already accepted that she will cry, she feels the tears coming.

There’s Quỳnh drawn by Yusuf’s hand, devotion and affection in his lines, in the red used to colour her vest. There’s a green lake painted with Yusuf’s watercolours in a mix of both styles, the result just like Andy remembers it. There’s Nicky dressed as an undertaker with the short moustache that made Andy laugh every time she saw it. Nile and Andy playing chess on a bench, Nile holding the black rook in her hand with a delighted smile, Andy frowning but smiling as well with challenge in her eyes. Yusuf drew them and Nile coloured, added the light filtering between the branches above them.

There’s Booker and Joe watching tv that night near Paris. It’s not coloured, but it feels like a promise, a concession.

There’s Lykon as Andy described it to Nile. The smile is so perfect that for a moment Andy wonders if Nile ever dreamt of Lykon despite the fact that he’s been dead for centuries.

She is crying now, full sobs. They’re all _memories_ , reality through her eyes.

The last few pages are all mammoths and other animals from Earth as it once was.

“Fucking mammoths,” Andy laughs and cries, finally. “You made me cry with fucking mammoths.”

They were waiting for this signal. In a moment, they’re all hugging her, and Andy cries but she’s happy, she’s mortal, she’s alive, she’s not alone. She holds the stupid stuffed mammoth. The others hold her.

(In her room, her phone buzzes. It’s Booker’s phone.

_Quỳnh is alive with me. We’re waiting for you in Paris.)_

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr, I'm @nicolodigenovas and I post way too much


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